


Your Body And The Basin

by Oyakata_Manya



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: But mostly Raiden-centric, Character Death, Character Study, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Jeez where do I even start with this one, Let’s see, Mental Instability, Non-Chronological, POV Multiple, Philosophy, Psychology, Reality Bending, Surrealism, Tonal Incoherence, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, unhealthy thought processes, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 19:56:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20297095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oyakata_Manya/pseuds/Oyakata_Manya
Summary: “There was a scenario presented to the public once by a famous philosopher. He said, ‘What if you discovered that in the real world, your brain was lying in a vat of nutrients, connected to a device that displayed the world you see and feel around you? If the world you perceive as reality, is, in fact, only a delusion?’”“What he was getting at was, even if whatever you see, feel and think is fake, if that’s what you’re seeing, feeling, and thinking—does it even matter?”





	Your Body And The Basin

**Author's Note:**

> Hmm. This fic was something of a monster project for me, as this piece was supposed to capture all of the confusing feelings that the end of MGS2 had left me with. 
> 
> I played it for the first time in February, by the way. 
> 
> As a bit of a side note, some the characters’ dialogue is from Satoshi Kon’s ‘Parika’ and the theme about totems is from Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’—which are two of my favorite films of all time.

The standard procedure in the case of an emergency when in VR is to locate a “totem:” this being a distinct item that you, the player, will be able to recognize, while the AI will not.

A totem can be any item. It is important to indentify your totem before beginning the mission in case of an emergency.

Emergencies can include, but are not limited to; failure of the mission, corrosion of the AI, or the collapse of the virtual world. We trust players to be able to know when an emergency occurs, and when it is appropriate to use the totem.

Once the totem is located, the player must come into physical contact with the item and use it to perform an action that the AI would not comprehend; for example, using a pair of scissors to cause your virtual death.

If you use the totem properly you will immediately leave the VR. Make sure to check with the scientific department that you have suffered no neurological damage, and that your physical health is not at risk. 

You are then to immidiately report to your commanding officer and explain what occurred in VR and what caused the emergency. A detailed mission recording will be expected.

Failure to comply with the VR emergency procedures may result in irrepairable neaurological damage, injury, or even death. Remember this during any mission.

Good luck, players!

* * *

The wake of Big Shell feels positively dreamy. 

Dreamy, perhaps, but not in a bad way, simply dream-like in its ordinary-ness. Jack is happy, really, happy with a quiet little life like this. He and Rose are happy. The baby’s on its way, stumbling forward like a stone, ready to trip into their lives. He’s ready for it, he thinks. Being a father really can’t be all that much harder than being a puppet of war. 

It feels like a dream. A hazy fever dream, or perhaps a nightmare, looking back on it. He remembers himself in Arsenal’s belly, and watches the events play out like a film. 

Poor little Jack, in the belly of the beast. Doomed to be fattened up and eaten—wasn’t that how it went?

Jack’s better now though, really. He stays at home and watches the apartment while Rose goes off to work. It’s quiet and peaceful, a pleasant stay. The baby’s room is all dolled up, and the windows are open to unveil the whole of New York beneath him. 

It’s fine. He’s fine. He’s happy. 

* * *

_Snake, you’ve gotta get out of there, now!_

…

His first dry run, his first mission, and he’s helpless. The VR world is exploding, expelling itself onto him. His figure is swimming, and he feels nauseous in his head. The wriggling is invisible. Insolvable. 

Perhaps he’s going mad, like the guards, who march in a parade, one-two one-two. Stay in step, now. Step at Mach-four!

Snake is dizzy, dazzling, his plasma hair is shimmering and his body moves to the beat, the beat of the guards’ bombastic steps. What sort of glorious parade is this? Even their guns are flying away, floating up to the heavens. 

He feels sick with it like a fever dreamer. Is that what this is? A dream? A disaster? A distinguished dioppoly of dissonance, discord, deranged and de-fanged, distance! He’s got to put some distance between himself and it all, take a step back, get a good clear lungful of focus and assess the situation. He’s still in VR, right? He has to be; the swimming colours that swallow the world around him are proof of it, surely. 

What was he supposed to do in this type of situation? He couldn’t find it in himself to remember, his brain is like a bank, freshly robbed of all necessities. What does he do? Snake reaches out, leans against a wall to steady himself, but it’s sticky and slimy like the belly of a beast. He feels sick, he careens over and throws up. 

The idea hits him like a brick. Nanocommunication! Of course! Snake doesn’t understand why he hadn’t thought of it before, such an obvious answer—

he calls his superior officer, and he—

“the number you called for assisting young children,” 

grasps at his guts, they feel as though they’re being pulled apart

“is not available because of crowded tires in the Pacific Ocean,”

his head is heavy like lead, swings it forward, to crack open his

“starting at seven sixty-three a.m.”

…

_Snake? Snake?! ... Where’s your totem, Snake?_

…

* * *

The wake of Big Shell feels positively dreamy. 

Dreamy, perhaps, not in a bad way, simply dream-like in its ordinary-ness. 

The days in summer have a tendency to blur together like a stew; a stew of time and all things ordinary and plain and dull. When Rose goes to work in the mornings, she tells him—

“Really Jack, you ought to move on by now. The baby’s coming, it’s time for you to go out and look for work.”

she tells him—

“Jack, you were out again last night. Please, if there’s something on your mind, talk to me! You can trust me, Jack.”

she tells him—

…

The days in summer have a tendency to blur together like a stew; a stew of time and all things ordinary and plain and dull. When Rose goes to work in the mornings, she tells him to go about his day and enjoy himself. 

Jack does his best. He walks about the place, opens the windows to watch New York beneath his feet. He makes himself breakfast, and drinks the cheap beer that Rose keeps in the fridge while he turns on the television. 

It’s tuned to some news outlet, reporting on the day-to-day. It’s really lovely, no problems for the reporters to keep up with for now, so they busy themselves by discussing mundane things, like the weather. For early May it’s delightfully temperate—isn’t that just wonderful? New York residents are encouraged to go out, to shop and partake in local businesses, make your day a great one, the lady on screen says, and she tells him—

_”You’re being silly. What we propose to do is not to censor content, but to create context.”_

_”Create context?”_

_Raiden_Jack’s gut stutters. He feels hazy, dreamy. The wake of Big Shell feels positively dreamy—

* * *

This is not the first time a VR mission has gone poorly for him. 

Snake—no, Raiden—has experience in this. He remembers the oppression in him, the raw cold feeling of uneasiness creeping up his spine. 

It’s all perfectly in line with what he’s seen before—no, what he’s been trained to expect. His sudden vulnerability, his nudity and the absurdity of the situation. It’s like it came straight out of the VR emergency manual. 

The VR emergency manual—he remembers.

There is. There’s something he’s supposed to do, in a case like this. There’s—

And then suddenly the Colonel is contacting him again. His voice in Raiden’s ear, the dangerous way it crackles with his strange speech is horrifying, it’s unsettling. Raiden wishes he could turn it off, tune it out. With every incoming call his mind feels as though he’s being molested. The raw, sticky feeling of having no control and no understanding. 

The Colonel begins, “I hear it’s amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hari Kiri rock!” His voice crackles and distorts, wiggles and writhes, and next, angrily, he spits, “_I need scissors! Sixty-one!_”

A pair… of scissors!

That’s right, Raiden remembers in a hazy daze, even as Colonel closes out the conversation. The VR emergency manual had alluded to that, that if he just might find a pair of scissors than he can—

* * *

The sky is bright and sunny, and the whole of New York is aglow beneath the apartment building. 

Rose had gone out shopping. It’s a warm and pleasant day and the supermarket hadn’t been terribly crowded, so it had seemed like the perfect opportunity. 

Her groceries bounce and clink together and she stops in front of the apartment door to finagle her keys out of her pocket. 

Her fingers shake a bit, her whole body’s a little jittery. If she’s being perfectly honest, she’s nervous. Jack’s behavior isn’t normal, it’s as though he’s fallen out of himself. She wants to talk to him, wants to try to _be _there for him, but it’s like the man’s become a hollowed out husk of a person, living in a dream in the wake of Big Shell. 

The door opens. 

“Jack?” She calls out as she steps into the apartment. She receives no reply, and her voice seems to bounce and echo off the walls. Something’s wrong. 

“Jack?” She repeats again, setting down her groceries and creeping timidly down the narrow hallway towards their bedroom. 

Rose stops in the middle though, where the bathroom is, turns her head and suddenly there is Jack, circled up on the floor in a fetal position, and there’s blood, a ringing, singing crimson that’s on the floor and on the shower curtains, staining them beyond repair. Jack’s eyes are bloodshot, he’s shaking and she can see that there’s an enormous gash on his neck, like it’s been sliced open and his hands are soaked in red, fingers shaking there’s a gnarled pair of scissors in his grasp—

“I have,” his voice is quivering and quaking, Rose is going to be sick. “To wake up—”

…

The sky is bright and sunny, and the whole of New York is aglow beneath the apartment building. 

Rose had gone out shopping. It’s a warm and pleasant day and the supermarket hadn’t been terribly crowded, so it had seemed like the perfect opportunity. 

Her groceries bounce and clink together and she stops in front of the apartment door to finagle her keys out of her pocket. 

Her fingers shake a bit, her whole body’s a little jittery. If she’s being perfectly honest, she’s nervous—ah, but that’s no good. She has nothing to be nervous about. Jack is recovering a bit slower than she anticipated, but he’ll be fine, and soon enough the baby will be here, and it’ll surely brighten up both of their lives. 

The door opens. 

“Jack?” She calls out as she steps into the apartment. She receives no reply, but hears a slight shuffling coming from down the hallway. 

She meanders through the apartment before coming to stop in front of the bathroom. 

Jack is stood inside, head hanging low in front of the mirror. There’s a mess of wispy blond locks on the floor, and she notes that the cute bob-ish haircut she’d so loved on him is now mangled beyond repair. 

She’s so distracted by that, that the furious shivering of his hands and their iron, angry grip on a pair of scissors goes nearly unnoticed. 

“Jack—” she begins, a bit exasperated, but he interrupts her. 

“I just… wanted to cut it.” Is all that he says. 

* * *

  


Jack dreams that his body up and flies away. 

He feels his bones become dust particles, feels his muscles unwind and untwine. Feels a pair of scissors snap crisply around his neck. 

He’s floating, lilting, like airborne pollen. His soul tears and frays at the edges, like it’s breaking apart, too. He’s a fabric, an identity, and idea that was once given form, but no longer is. 

He dreams that his soul is held between a pair of human hands. A woman’s hands, and he dreams that she gives him a new body. Gives him breath in a new life. 

…

When Jack wakes up, his body is a mechanical one, and he is Raiden again. 

* * *

“Oh. So you’re awake.”

He is, though he might not have been aware of it had the thought not been stated aloud. He feels out of it, but that might be an understatement. He feels like his consciousness and his body are not together. 

So, struggling, he heaves up a bit, looks away from a white, featureless ceiling and studies the room. It’s a hospital room, blank white and inoffensive, and on one side of him is an IV hooked into his arm, and on the other is a woman in a lab coat. 

“Good morning, Snake.” She greets him. 

He shakes his head a little, and platinum blonde bangs fall into his eyes. He moves to lift his arm to brush them out of the way, but then decides against it. “...Snake?”

The woman turns away from him, begins typing on a computer. “Yes, and that would be you.” She says crisply. “It’s a code name of sorts. Think of yourself as something of an agent.” Then she turns away from the computer, and back to him. “It would make sense that you don’t remember any of this, since you’ve suffered severe neurological trauma.”

It’s almost too much to fathom. Neurological trauma? Didn’t he just wake up from dreaming? But he doesn’t say anything, and she continues. 

“You were one of the many VR trainees we’ve been testing new equipment on. During your dive into the VR the virtual world began to compress. The nanomachines,” she taps her head once, as though that defines the word. “We’d implanted into your brain were starting to break down. It was quite unexpected. But all of this wouldn’t have become such an ordeal had you merely been able to get out of the VR in the way you’ve been instructed.”

It’s like she’s scolding him, a mother chiding her young son for lying. For doing something wrong, or breaking something irreparably. 

She sighs, and swivels her chair absentmindedly. “Not that you’d remember any of that, anyway. Hell, you don’t even know why you’re here.” Then she smiles, and it’s reptilian and malicious. “Do you want to know why you’re here, Snake?”

He does, but he’s scared. There’s something unnerving about all of this. He’s uneasy. He swallows, and tells her, “Yes.”

“Because while your mind was trapped in VR, your _real _body was smashing your head violently into a nearby wall.”

He’s—!

—lurching forward he suddenly feels sick with it, like the phantom feeling of it is coming back. The blinding mind-numbing pain, his head cracking and splintering against hard concrete—

He throws up. Onto himself, and the bed, and the woman calls someone in to clean him up. He goes through the motions like he’s still dreaming, like he’s in a daze. 

When he’s settled again the woman says to him, “Well, what matters is that you’re awake now. Let’s see how much you’re aware of at the moment. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three.” He answers, and she makes an affirmative noise. 

They go on like this for a while, with her asking him questions, before finally falling onto the last one. 

“Excellent. You seem alright, Snake. Now, are you certain you’re in the ‘real world’ right now?”

The world is swimmy, hazy. His body is fog. 

“No,” he answers. “I’m not.”

* * *

That’s right, they’re in love, Jack and Rose. 

They’re in a deep, deep, all-encompassing love. They’re going to be married soon, bonded in body and soul, and they have a child on the way even now. A little person with half of themselves inside. A physical embodiment of their love. 

_Love. _Jack is in love. 

He fucks her like he loves her, like it’ll bring him happiness, her calls and cries as she cuts him with her nails dragging garishly down his back. And maybe it does, who knows. Happiness is a construct, just like love. 

A construct…

…

_“Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, but just couldn’t,” The Colonel tells him, like a little bird expelling secrets into his ear. “On Saturday morning last week, I saw a guy leaving Rosemary’s room... How should I put it—it was like they were ‘intimate.’”_

_”I’m sorry. Sorry to bring this up during the mission, but—“_

… 

He remembers, even now. They told him that it wasn’t real, that none of the things that the Colonel had told him were true—but still, if there was even a chance—

And Jack fucks her harder, fucks her deep and angry. She keens his name, throws her head backwards and gasps open-mouthed. Her legs squeeze tightly around his waist, and he wonders if she does this for other men. Looks like this in front of other men. 

He fucks her like he hates her, like it’ll bring him salvation, the velvet way she wraps around him and the silky pull of her guts against his length. He wants to give her his unhappiness and feed her his revenge. Make her feel pain and betrayal within her very being. 

But she doesn’t. Instead, Rose cries just once, tenses and squirts enthusiastically like a slut. She howls “Jack…!” As though the name means anything to her. 

And then she smiles. Lolls her head and looks him in the eyes, satisfied. She reaches one hand up and runs it through his short, greying hair. 

“Oh…” she says longingly, “You do look so much like him. But not quite.” Drops her hand.

“My Jack has longer, prettier hair than this.”

* * *

When David arrives at home from his trek across the Alaskan tundra, he is tired, soaked to the bone in snow and mud, and in desperate need of a few hours of peace. 

“Oh, you’re back!” Hal greets him brightly from his seat at his desk, computer gleaming in the dim of the room. “I wasn’t expecting you to be back for a few more hours.”

David grunts. “I wasn’t expecting to _be _back for a few more hours, but a certain pack of snarling wolves made me a change of plans.”

“Oh, eheh.” Hal chuckles lightly, then turns back to his screen. He seems to be reading, scrolling and clicking things with leisure. Probably not something of great importance. 

David removes his boots and steps into the living area of their makeshift-home-base (they really should decide on what they want to call this joint) in easy, simply silence. If he can get into a hot shower, that will certainly brighten his mood. 

Then Hal says, idly, “Say, Snake. Listen to this.”

David pauses, and listens. 

“There was a scenario presented to the public once by a famous philosopher. He said, ‘What if you discovered that in the real world, your brain was lying in a vat of nutrients, connected to a device that displayed the world you see and feel around you? If the world you perceive as reality, is, in fact, only a delusion?’”

“A delusion, huh?” David echoes absentmindedly. He’s not _really _paying attention, he’s more enraptured with the thought of a nice, long shower than he is with philosophy this late at night. 

“That’s right, a delusion. Like your entire life—no, your entire _existence_ was one big lie.”

David clicks his tongue at that. “Yeah. Wonder what that might be like.” He knows from first hand experience. 

But he goes on. “It’s easy to convince people of what might and might not be the truth. The hard part is keeping that lie going even after they find out.”

Hal sighs. “No, that wasn’t the point. What he was getting at was, even if whatever you see, feel and think is fake, if that’s what you’re seeing, feeling, and thinking—does it even matter?”

That brings David to pause for a moment. There’s a weight to that question—_does it matter?_—and he wonders. 

It might be easier, to simply live the lie. To accept the illusion as truth. Ignorance is bliss, they say. 

But that isn’t life. 

_And life is worth living. Even if it hurts you. Even if you hurt in it._

He tells Hal, “Yes. It matters very much.” And exits the room. 

* * *

  


It’s Saturday, sometime in June, and the sun is gleaming and glittering above the giddy bustle that is New York City. 

Rose smiles to herself. It’s a truly beautiful morning. 

She rubs a hand against her rounded belly idly as she makes her way into the apartment complex. The baby’s due in a few weeks, and she’s positive that this child, if nothing else, will bring happiness into their dreary lives. 

It’s not so bad, really, it isn’t that things are terrible now, or something like that. It’s just that Jack is absent lately, somewhere she can’t follow. 

It’s okay. It’s all fine. They’re all perfectly, fantastically fine. 

She hums to herself on the elevator ride up to their floor. 

She’s got a bag of take-out breakfast dangling from her arm, and the smell of it brings a grin to her face. Jack will be so happy. So happy to learn that she _remembered_ him. 

When she makes it to their floor she’s practically skipping, a soon-to-be-mother and a woman in love, a woman in love with life. Her life has turned out so perfect. 

Even if Big Shell has left Jack a little less than he was before, even if it has damaged him, there’s surely some way to repair him by the time their child arrives. 

Surely. 

She unlocks the door, and she’s greeted by a gruesome sight. 

Their living area is a mess, a disaster, damaged beyond repair. The window is smashed open like a shattered heart, hairline fractures running and reeling along the glassy surface, and there are shards all along the floor, decorating their carpet like tears in the snow. Amidst all of this stands Jack, doubled over and helpless, hollowed out like a doll and howling, oh what a horrible howling, he’s gripping a pointed and sharp fractured splinter of glass in his hand and he’s bloodied, dripping from an open stab wound in his neck—

“Jack!” Rose shrieks, dropping the food and rushing towards him, paying no heed to the glass on the floor. She reaches to him but he flinched and pulls back, and she screams again, “Jack! What is going on?! _Why _are you doing this?!”

_This._

That’s right. This has been going on for a long time. 

She’s so, so, sick of it. 

Jack raises his head, looks at her desperately with bloodshot eyes. There’s a gaping open hole in his neck, and it pulls her in. 

“This isn’t real!” He says suddenly, violently swinging an arm out against her. He stumbles back once more, creeping ever closer to the open window, and the wind billows in. They’re up so high here, even God could reach in from this altitude. 

“None of this is real! Not the Colonel, not you, you’re all…!” He swings himself around bodily like a madman, steps back again, and continues. “You’re all in my head…! I want out!” Another step. “Out of this virtual world! But you won’t let me—_there aren’t even any scissors in this place!_” 

_Scissors?_ she wonders, but then she remembers that he’s right, that she removed every pair one by one as a necessary precaution. 

“Jack,” She begins, and this time she’s calmer, though he’s testing her patience. “Jack, listen. It’s for your own safety. Everything I do is to to _protect_ you.”

He rages, takes another step back. He’s so close to the window, and the wind blows through his long hair. “Shut up! Quit it with that bullshit! Get out of my head!”

Another step back, and—

“_I just want to wake up!_”

he stumbles, crashes through the remaining panels of the window, and Jack falls, and falls, and falls down the length of their towering apartment building. 

She rushes to him, to grab his arm or save him or something, suddenly desperate. “Jack—!”

The bagged breakfast she’d bought for him knocks over with the force of the wind, and spills onto the floor, forgotten. 

...

It’s Saturday, sometime in June, and the sun is gleaming and glittering above the giddy bustle that is New York City. 

Rose smiles to herself. It’s a truly beautiful morning. 

She rubs a hand against her rounded belly idly as she makes her way into the apartment complex. The baby’s due in a few weeks, and she’s positive that this child, if nothing else, will bring happiness into her dreary life. 

It’s not so bad, really, it isn’t that things are terrible now, or something like that. It’s just that Jack is absent now, somewhere she can’t follow. 

It’s okay. It’s all fine. She’s perfectly, fantastically fine. 

She hums to herself on the elevator ride up to their floor. 

She’s got a bag of take-out breakfast dangling from her arm, and the smell of it brings a grin to her face. Jack would be so happy. So happy to learn that she _remembered_ him. 

When she makes it to their floor she’s practically skipping, a soon-to-be-mother and a woman in love, a woman in love with life. Her life has turned out so perfect. 

Even if Big Shell had left Jack a little less than he was before, even if it has damaged him, there’d surely be some way to repair him by the time their child arrives. 

Surely. 

She was so _sure_.

She unlocks the door, and she’s greeted by a lonely, dismal sight. 

An empty and abandoned apartment, tattered and forgotten. Unloved and unsolvable. 

She sets her breakfast for one on the counter of their—her—kitchen, and mourns the disappearance of her Jack. 

…

She sets her breakfast for one on the counter of their—her—kitchen, and decides just one last time to attempt to call him up. 

She types in Jack’s number to her cellphone, waits out three or four rings before his voicemail picks up. 

“The number you’ve called for assisting young children,”

it’s Jack’s voice, but it isn’t _Jack_

“is not available because of crowded tires in the Pacific Ocean,”

and suddenly she begins to weep, defeated, like a child

“starting at seven sixty-three a.m.” 

what has she _done_

* * *

It’s April thirtieth, and Jack and Rose are making love. 

Everything is fine now, everything is good. The two of them have been able to move on and grow forward since the wake of Big Shell, and isn’t that utterly wonderful?

Jack certainly thinks so, and he clutches Rose close to him as her calls grow higher and higher pitched. She’s getting close. They both are, and it would be so romantic if they might be able to reach climax together. 

He pushes himself, shaking the bed with the force of his thrusts, and Rose loves it because she cries and screams like she’s happy. 

They’re both, so, so happy. 

Faster and faster, he’s getting closer and closer until he buries himself deep within her, up to the hilt and cums inside of her, because he loves her. 

And because he loves her, in the aftermath and his oversensitivity, he brushes his hand loving along Rose’s dark hair. 

“Today is the day I met you,” He states. “Happy anniversary, love.”

Rose falls silent. 

…

When Jack wakes up, he is trapped in a mechanical body. There’s a blade in his hand, and blood smattered across his front. 

The woman lying beneath him is a dead enemy soldier, not Rose, and he is Raiden again. 

* * *

When Raiden meets Matka Pluku he is working solo in Europe. He’s on the end of a rope, everyday is bloodshed and bleary, blurry dreaminess. 

She tells him she’s leading a resistance group in the area. She invites him to join, and when he asks what could possibly be in it for him, she tells him about the System, the Patriots and the PMCs.

“It’s just like a nightmare,” He tells her in a daze when he’s mind up his mind to side with her. “Am I still dreaming?”

“Yes,” She says. “The whole world is.”

.

**Author's Note:**

> The philosophy question that Otacon talks about is a real scenario studied in metaphysics, but I can’t for the life of me, remember who the philosopher was that initially proposed it. 
> 
> Quite the intriguing thought though, isn’t it?


End file.
